ON ANGLING. 117 



V. 



FINAL WORDS TO THE TROUT FISHERMAN. 



JUST one more word about that eternal question of 

 " drag," which, as a dry-fly angler, you will find to be 

 always with you, and then I think we may leave the problems 

 of the cast, presuming you to be as proficient in them as 

 any hints of mine can make you, and after that I hope 

 to discourse to you more at large and in less didactic 

 manner. 



This " drag ' becomes peculiarly vexatious and difficult 

 to avoid when the fish that you wish to attract is lying in 

 a current travelling less fast than that which intervenes 

 between you and it. In such a situation it is evident 

 that the reel line will at once, on alighting, begin to be 

 carried down more rapidly than the extremity of the 

 gut to which the fly belongs and which is in the less rapid 

 current where the fish lies. The only way, so far as I 

 know, to avoid the fatal " drag " in such a case is to 

 make such a cast as shall pitch the line on the water 

 with its " belly ' convexly up-stream. It is not so 

 difficult of execution as it sounds, provided you 

 have no bushes behind to complicate matters, and no 

 unfavouring wind. The wind which is unfavourable for this 

 particular throw is that which we rather prefer in less 

 exacting conditions — that is to say, any kind of up-stream 

 wind. What favours the cast, and makes it easy, is a 

 light down-stream wind. 



You will see why this is so : if the wind is up-stream, 

 no matter how cleverly you put the reel line on the water, 

 with its curve up-stream, the wind will almost certainly 

 catch the light cast and chuck it a foot or two up-stream as 

 it comes to the water, thereby defeating all your best laid 



